Handmade Style by Anna Graham

I have really enjoyed making projects out of this book.  The author has a blog, Noodlehead, and there are videos that help walk you through some of the projects in the book or how to do a technique that is particularly challenging in the book.  For me, a person who has quilted a lot in the distant past, but not much recently and hadn't put a zipper in in over 30 years, everything seems somewhat challenging.  I was helped through making the zippered pouch with compartments pictured here in a class that I took at my favorite local shop, Home Ec.  I wouldn't have been able to do it without some pretty patient coaching, and mine came out better than I could ever have hoped for.  There is something really gratifying about making a project that looks impossible given your current skills and to be successfully walked through the process to completion.  It is true that you can buy almost everything that the book walks you through making, but the ability to make it with your own choices of fabric and to be able to look at it and know that it was made by hand is a wonderful feeling that literally money cannot buy.  My only hope is that if I choose to make another one of these that it will seem easier for me to accomplish!